Al Bruce: Redskins no longer look like still life

Monday

Jun 26, 2017 at 2:34 PM

No, they’re not Super Bowl bound but they won more games and got further than they have in the NFL playoffs since 1992 when they beat the Buffalo Bills in that year’s version of football king of the hill. The 2017-18 Skins drafted healthy young players and (with a little bit of luck) might make the …what the heck is A-E thinking? They’ve the same chance as A-E has of winning a Pulitzer Prize.

Big Mike versus Big Wildcat

Mike wandered his Troupsburg back woods and inadvertently confronted a very big cat (think mountain lion on steroids, he told neighbor Bill). Two-footed and four-footed creatures screamed in surprise and beat feet from each other. Mike stopped running only after he was hundreds of yards outside the woods. The big cat ran faster and deeper into the forest. Mike wasted no time guessing the species or following him.

Go gNats, maybe this year’s new boys of summer

Frau wouldn’t listen to A-E gushing about the Washington Nationals major league-leading baseball team. Her team nickname: ’gNats.’ Yankeeland readers: The all-time Washington Nationals regular season record from 2005 to 2011: 492 wins and 640 losses. In 2017, gNats are 10 games ahead in the National League East, despite occasional extra-inning dramatics. Last year, the team lost to the world champion St. Louis Cardinals in their first playoffs since 1933 so history and arithmetic won again. Unlike Neighbor Rick’s Yankees, winning seasons are uncharted territory for gNats. But if the Cubs and Red Sox can beat curses…

Frau and A-E cause Greater Jasper heat

Some neighbors note that Greater Jasper summers have been much warmer since Frau and A-E moved from North Carolina almost 10 years ago. That causal relationship, some neighbors insist, is proof we brought Dixie heat. Frau happily admits rainmaking: When she waters flora during warm-weather mini-droughts, rains falls throughout Greater Jasper. She was 3,000 miles away in Sacramento helping care for her mom when our dry spell last summer browned area grass and geraniums.

Serial A-E insult No. 173 from correspondent-classmate Pat

“Why do I find interesting the rantings of a 77-year-old man (that’s A-E, in the unlikely event you missed Pat’s lack of subtlety) and obituaries? Is it true that when Canisteo International Airport (CIA) needs to de-ice planes all passengers are required to fall out for the ‘hands on’ de-icing drill of aircraft wings?’” (Pat hasn’t heard about the CIA taxi strike that means he‘ll need to hike through foul weather to catch those early morning hops to Stuttgart)

More news about A-E’s favorite whipping boys

Good news: Public ratings of Congress have increased with recent polls. Bad news: Gallup ratings for Congress are now 24 percent in June versus 14 percent approval and 81 percent disapproval in 2016.

Dennis Rodman, Secretary of Dangerous Daffiness

Maybe that bastion of intellectual achievement, Glenn Beck University, will open the Dennis Rodman School of International Diplomacy. A-E’s gonna guess Dennis’ remarks are nuts: "I love him,” he rhapsodized about North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un. “He was so honest." What did Dennis call the starvation of 3.5 million North Koreans, pray tell? Rodman dismissed prison camps and reports of mass murder as "just politics." The basketball equivalent of Daffy Duck handed Kim Jong Un a copy of your president’s signature volume “The Art of The Deal.”

Happy birthday, Time magazine and Neighbor Bill

The weekly celebrates 91 years this year and is the only one of the big three periodicals still publishing: U.S. News and Newsweek have gone the way of too many print outlets during the past decade. Neighbor Bill was only three years old when Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden published the initial edition with House Speaker Joseph G. Cannon on the cover. My, how time has changed Time and Willie in the past 91 years.